Posted on 01/13/2004 9:01:35 AM PST by Aurelius
Dust jackets for most books about the American Civil War depict generals, politicians, battle scenes, cavalry charges, cannons[sic] firing, photographs or fields of dead soldiers, or perhaps a battle between ironclads. In contrast our book {[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XGHOEK4JT&isbn=0842029613&itm=7]Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Mark Thornton, Steven E. Woodworth (Editor), Robert B. Ekelund[/url]features a painting by Edgar Degas entitled the "Cotton Exchange" which depicts several calm businessmen and clerks, some of them Degas’s relatives, going about the business of buying and selling cotton at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The focus of this book is thus on the economic rationality of seemingly senseless events of the Civil War – a critical period in American history.
What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.
We use traditional economic analysis, some of it of the Austrian and Public Choice variety, to address these principal questions and our conclusions generally run counter to the interpretations of historians. In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, we show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the valued of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.
Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War – an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.
We emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.
Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.
The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and most especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade and inflation, like the focus of Degas’s "Cotton Exchange" reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.
your ignorant, arrogant,self-righteous damnyankees don't want to admit that right up until 1866 that THOUSANDS of northern individuals & large companies OWNED SLAVES, including your vaunted GEN U S Grant!
did you think we were too stupid to know those "inconvenient facts"?????
free dixie,sw
LIBERTY, though without question, DIED when Richmond fell.
the WBTS was the end of the FREE REPUBLIC that T. Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton & others believed would ETERNALLY exist.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
Irrelevant.
You wish it was.
It strikes straight to the heart of the matter. The executive (Jackson in this case) must have authority to act in an emergency.
The Constitution nowhere says what the president may or may not do in regard to the Writ. The matter has not been authoritatively decided to this very day.
However, when presented with a real world situation, Congress rewarded Jackson for his actions.
Walt
The only way that would affect the principle is if the Framers knew about telegraphs when they wrote the Constitution.
Walt
Not really. They certainly didn't know that Louisiana was going to become a part of the United States when they wrote the Constitution. In fact, the only states back then were all along the coast and at most a few days travel from each other. News could be quickly communicated among the 13 states they knew when they wrote it, so no credible reason exists to even so much as speculate that they would have let the president suspend the writ absent of congressional approval. As for 1860, the telegraph made notice instantaneous so no excuse exists there either.
No Walt. It is irrelevant. Jackson exceeded his authority, got fined, OPENLY CONCEDED THAT THE FINE AGAINST HIM WAS PERFECTLY LEGAL AND PAID IT, then some years later got a refund from Congress out of kindness. NOBODY - not even Jackson himself - disputed that the fine was assessed for a legally valid reason. Congress simply said after the fact "yeah, you exceeded your authority but didn't do any harm by it so we forgive you"
It strikes straight to the heart of the matter. The executive (Jackson in this case) must have authority to act in an emergency.
No he doesn't. First off, there is absolutely NO reason why Jackson could not have booked his arrestees with specific charges. Thus his suspension was NOT out of necessity but rather convenience to conduct the very same arrests with less paperwork and without the trouble of having to specify crimes for the detained. Second, when the law struck back at him for suspending the writ he abided by it (unlike Lincoln).
The Constitution nowhere says what the president may or may not do in regard to the Writ.
The Constitution also says nothing about the president having to abide by laws that make murder illegal. Does that mean he can murder anyone he wants?
As for what the Constitution DOES say, it places the suspension power in one place and one place only: the Congress. The matter has not been authoritatively decided to this very day.
Repeat that fib all you desire (and I have no doubt that you will considering that you are an habitual liar) but these authorities all say otherwise:
"The privileges and benefit of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall be enjoyed in this Government, in the most expeditious and ample manner; and shall not be suspended by the Legislature, except upon the most urgent and pressing occasions, and for a limited time not exceeding months." - Charles Pickney, announcing the proposal to limit the suspension of habeas corpus, Constitutional Convention, 1787
"The people by adopting the federal constitution, give congress general powers to institute a distinct and new judiciary, new courts, and to regulate all proceedings in them, under the eight limitations mentioned in a former letter; and the further one, that the benefits of the habeas corpus act shall be enjoyed by individuals." - Richard Henry Lee, Anti-Federalist #16, "Federal Farmer"
"In the same section it is provided, that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion and invasion, the public safety may require it." This clause limits the power of the legislature to deprive a citizen of the right of habeas corpus, to particular cases viz. those of rebellion and invasion; the reason is plain, because in no other cases can this power be exercised for the general good." - Robert Yates, delegate to the Constitutional Convetion, Anti-Federalist #9, "Brutus"
"The safest and best restriction, therefore, arises from the nature of the cases in which Congress are authorized to exercise that power [of suspending habeas corpus] at all, namely, in those of rebellion or invasion. These are clear and certain terms, facts of public notoriety, and whenever these shall cease to exist, the suspension of the writ must necessarily cease also." - Judge Francis Dana, presenting the Constitution to the Massachusetts Ratification Convention
"In the United States, it can be suspended, only, by the authority of congress; but not whenever congress may think proper; for it cannot be suspended, unless in cases of actual rebellion, or invasion. A suspension under any other circumstances, whatever might be the pretext, would be unconstitutional, and consequently must be disregarded by those whose duty it is to grant the writ." - St. George Tucker, Commentaries, 1803
"The decision that the individual shall be imprisoned must always precede the application for a writ of habeas corpus, and this writ must always be for the purpose of revising that decision, and therefore appellate in its nature. But this point also is decided in Hamilton's case and in Burford's case. If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide." - Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout, United States Supreme Court, 1807
"Those respecting the press, religion, & juries, with several others, of great value, were accordingly made; but the Habeas corpus was left to the discretion of Congress, and the amendment against the reeligibility of the President was not proposed by that body." - Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
"The Constitution seems to have secured this benefit [habeas corpus] to the citizen by the description of the writ, and in an unqualified manner admitting its efficacy, while it declares that it shall not he suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety shall require it. This writ is believed to be known only in countries governed by the common law, as it is established in England; but in that country the benefit of it may at any time be withheld by the authority of parliament, whereas we see that in this country it cannot be suspended even in cases of rebellion or invasion, unless the public safety shall require it. Of this necessity the Constitution probably intends, that the legislature of the United States shall be the judges. Charged as they are with the preservation of the United States from both those evils, and superseding the powers of the several states in the prosecution of the measures they may find it expedient to adopt, it seems not unreasonable that this control over the writ of habeas corpus, which ought only to be exercised on extraordinary occasions, should rest with them. It is at any rate certain, that congress, which has authorized the courts and judges of the United States to issue writs of habeas corpus in cases within their jurisdiction, can alone suspend their power" - William Rawle, "A View of the Constitution of the United States of America," 1826
"It would seem, as the power is given to congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion, that the right to judge, whether exigency had arisen, must exclusively belong to that body." - Justice Joseph Story, "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States," Book 3, Chapter XXXII, § 1336, 1833
"And who could hold for a moment, when the writ of habeas corpus cannot be suspended by the legislature itself, either in the general government or most of the States, without an express constitutional permission, that all other writs and laws could be suspended, and martial law substituted for them over the whole State or country, without any express constitutional license to that effect, in any emergency? Much more is this last improbable when even the mitigated measure, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, has never yet been found proper by Congress, and, it is believed, by neither of the States, since the Federal Constitution was adopted." - Justice Levi Woodbury, dissent in Luther v. Borden, United States Supreme Court, 1849
"With such provisions in the constitution, expressed in language too clear to be misunderstood by any one, I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the president, in any emergency, or in any state of things, can authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, or the arrest of a citizen, except in aid of the judicial power. He certainly does not faithfully execute the laws, if he takes upon himself legislative power, by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and the judicial power also, by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law." - Justice Roger B. Taney, Ex Parte Merryman, US Circuit Court of Appeals, 1861
"There has been much discussion concerning the question whether the power to suspend the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" is conferred by the Constitution on Congress, or on the President. The only judicial decisions which have been made upon this question have been adverse to the power of the President.Still, very able lawyers have endeavored to maintain -- perhaps to the satisfaction of others -- have maintained, that the power to deprive a particular person of the "privilege of the writ," is an executive power. For while it has been generally, and, so far as I know, universally admitted, that Congress alone can suspend a law, or render it inoperative, and consequently that Congress alone can prohibit the courts from issuing the writ, yet that the executive might, in particular cases, suspend or deny the privilege which the writ was designed to secure. I am not aware that any one has attempted to show that under this grant of power to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus," the President may annul the laws of States, create new offences unknown to the laws of the United States, erect military commissions to try and punish them, and then, by a sweeping decree, suspend the writ of habeas corpus as to all persons who shall be "arrested by any military authority." I think he would make a more bold than wise experiment on the credulity of the people, who should attempt to convince them that this power is found in the habeas corpus clause of the Constitution. No such attempt has been, and I think none such will be made. And therefore I repeat, that no other source of this power has ever been suggested save that described by the President himself, as belonging to him as commander-in-chief." - Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, "Executive Power," 1862 However, when presented with a real world situation, Congress rewarded Jackson for his actions.
The problem with that speculation is that it only considers the cost of wages. While it is true that the price paid for labor itself from a slave (virtually nothing) will be less than the salary of wage labor, the labor costs of the latter more or less end there. Slave labor incurs costs elsewhere in the form of everything from housing, food, clothing, the price of buying a slave itself, and yes - the expenditure of resources on preventing and capturing fugitives. The costs of most of these and other factors were all going up by 1860. So long as that trend continued, substitution to wage labor by economic necessity was only a matter of time.
Provision of necessities (housing etc.), deterence and capture of fugitives, cost of acquiring a slave itself.
That can only indicate that they were increasingly more valuable both as labor, and as a self-replicating investment vehicle.
Not necessarily. It could indicate that supply had shifted upward, thus raising the price of a slave for any given level of quantity from where it previously was. It could also indicate that demand for labor was outpacing the supply of one type of labor, in which case a substitute would eventually be sought. Put differently, they were able to buy fewer slaves for the same ammount of money as previously was the case. Since slaves were the labor INPUT to economic production their price is economically considered in production decisions. Production decisions change on any number of circumstances but a common one is substitution. Suppose for example you are a building houses for a living and use concrete bricks, which for some reason are the cheapest types of bricks right now. Also suppose they are the same color gray as any other type of gray bricks and that consumers don't seem to have much of a preference for one or the other - all they care about is getting a brick house as long as its gray. Now suppose that price goes up on gray concrete bricks until they become more expensive than gray ceramic bricks. You have a new house starting that sells for the same price as the old ones and want to get it built as cheaply as possible to reap the most profit. Since the buyer only cares that he gets a gray brick house, do you stick with the more expensive concrete bricks or switch to the cheaper ones?
Actually, the Senate was home until the end of March and could have been easily extended since Lincoln fully knew that a week later he would be starting a war.
while the rebels had sabatours burning the bridges between Philaderlphia and Baltimore that were to only way members of Congress could return to Washington in an expediant manner.
They were? Curious. Cause if I recall correctly, Lincoln quickly amassed an army containing several tens of thousands of soldiers from places as far away as Illinois and Massachusetts. Some of these soldiers were the reason why the bridges were being burned, yet they still made it to Washington. Yet you are apparently telling me that a single congressman could not have done the same thing?
There was no Reagan Ariport or I 95 in those days, ya know.
No, but their were railroads connecting every major city in the country save those on the left coast. There were also steamships serving every port on the east coast with a few days journey in between any two of them at most. The process was quite simple: get a telegram that Congress is to return, hop on a train and make it there in a day or two. If the train isn't working, hop on a ship and get there in three or four. And if the steamship isn't working, hop on the back of a horse and get there in a week.
What would President Bush do if an insurrection broke out in the Washington suburbs today while Congress is out of session?
Simple. Tell them to avoid those suburbs and come into town from the other side of the city. And if that doesn't work, tell them to sail up the Potomac. Either way, not a one of them would have an excuse for arriving much more than a week after the call at most.
Article I, Section 1 which vests the powers within that article, of which the clause stating "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it" is one, with the Congress.
Show us any data that shows that wage labor was displacing slave labor. In fact, the opposite was happening in the upper south. As demand for farm labor decreased, crafts and manufacturing were slowly moving from wage labor artisans to slaves rented from their rural owners. From craft labor like blacksmiths to shoemakers to common laborers in factories, mines, mills and railroad construction, rented slave labor was in fact replacing wage labor in the upper south. In the lower south, the "opportunity costs" of taking slaves away from the cotton fields was suficiently high that wage labor was less expensive than the price owners would demand for the use of their slaves. That opportunity cost premium is a very far way from wage labor being cheeper than slave labor.
You also highly exaggerate to costs of slave owning. While initial purchase was indeed expensive, estimates of costs of upkeep averaged between $2 and $3 per year per slave. Unless house slaves of a prosperous owner, they only had hand-me down clothing. Food was mostly what the slaves could grow in their "off-hours" with what ever reject scraps of meat the white family didn't want. (Would anyone invent something like chitlens if they had access to a rump roast?) Housing was dirt-floor shacks containing multiple "families". Medical care was spotty at best. There were no educational costs, no luxuries, no entertainment expenses.
The bridge burnings I know of happened about April 20 or so and were designed to prevent another riot in Baltimore. Were there other bridge burnings? Merryman was arrested May 25. Surely there was enough time between April 20 and May 25 to call a quorum of the Congress to consider the suspension of the writ.
The bridges were burned at the order of the mayor and governor. This stopped Northern troops from entering the city and thus stopped the bloodshed that had already occurred (4 troops were killed and 36 wounded while 12 civilians were killed and scores wounded).
Even after the bridge burnings, Northern troops could still get to Washington by simply bypassing the city via Relay House on the Northern Central railroad, which is what they ended up doing as the result of face-to-face negotiations between the mayor and Lincoln.
During the April 19th riot, the mayor himself had had to kill a rioter to help Massachusetts troops get through and the police chief and his men stood between the Baltimorians and the Massachusetts troops. From the report of the commander of the Massachusetts troops:
The mayor of Baltimore placed himself at the head of the column beside Captain Follansbee, and proceeded with them a short distance, assuring him that he would protect them, and begging him not to let the men fire; but the mayor's patience was soon exhausted, and he seized a musket from the hands of one of the men and killed a man therewith, and a policeman, who was in advance of the column, also shot a man with a revolver.
Nevertheless, the mayor of Baltimore was arrested for Southern sympathies in September along with newspaper editors and 30 Maryland legislators. The mayor was imprisoned for 14 months. I'm not sure he was ever charged.
The seceding states voluntarily withdrew I agree.
They willingly participated in the rebellion.
Nope. Only they defended their country from invasion.
They accepted the results of their actions, and that included keeping those who led the rebellion from returning to Congress as if nothing had happened.
The states resumed their seats in the federal congress, after being forced to ratify the 13th amendment as a "condition" of re-admission (find that in the Constitution). After those same states - now re-admittted - failed to ratify the 14th, they were prevented ex post facto from seating their congressmen.
Davis wanted the war. He needed the war. He got the war, and the results of it.
Davis did not want war - he sent peace commissioners to Washington. Lincoln refused to meet them. Lincoln wanted the war. Lincoln needed the war. Lincoln lied to Justice Campbell and the commissioners to get a war.
Negotiate what?
Settlement of disputed items. Renumeration for constuction costs of forts, renumeration for their share of western territories. To avoid bloodshed. Lincoln refused.
The immigration trends for one. Circa 1857 immigration into the southern states, which had been relatively stagnant for a couple decades, began to increase. The economics of immigration dictate that labor moves where opportunity for obtaining wealth exists for the reason that immigrants are utility maximizers (meaning they go where they think they can get a job or make money). The presence of wage jobs accordingly tends to induce immigration to the location of those jobs.
In fact, the opposite was happening in the upper south.
Actually it was the Virginia where the immigration trends most noticeably reversed in the 1850's. Virginia is the largest upper south state, so that appears to contradict your theory.
As demand for farm labor decreased, crafts and manufacturing were slowly moving from wage labor artisans to slaves rented from their rural owners.
Wrong. Skilled labor and craftsmen among the slave population had been commonplace since the mid-1700's when indentured servant artisans took on slaves as apprentices upon their arrival here. All the major plantation houses of architectural significance today from Mount Vernon and Monticello to the lesser known ones on the James River and Potomac had long employed this system. By 1850 it was not replacing farm labor for the reason that craft labor itself was on an even greater economic decline than farm labor due to increased mechanization in the production of former craft goods. It is this same reason why we still have farmers today but we don't have any blacksmiths, exempting of course those wierdos who work at renaissance fairs.
From craft labor like blacksmiths to shoemakers to common laborers in factories, mines, mills and railroad construction, rented slave labor was in fact replacing wage labor in the upper south.
No it wasn't. Craft labor as a whole was on the decline faster than any unskilled labor position. Slave labor had always been used in unskilled construction projects like railroads and buildings.
You also highly exaggerate to costs of slave owning. While initial purchase was indeed expensive, estimates of costs of upkeep averaged between $2 and $3 per year per slave.
Provide your source on that and a breakdown of the costs as well. I ask because it is doubtful they account for non-dollar expenses such as those that may be obtained from the farm itself (i.e. food, which can come from the grown produce of a plantation's domestic garden). You should also note that the seemingly small ammount of 2-3 dollars is the equivalent of about 50 dollars today - still not much, but a heck of a lot more than the tiny $2 per person fee. Multiply that $50 cost by 100-150 slaves and pretty soon you are talking a substantial ammount of money.
Unless house slaves of a prosperous owner, they only had hand-me down clothing.
Even hand-me downs cost something initially and have some value of their own. That aside, much of the slave clothing was NOT hand-me down but rather self-produced by the same slaves who sewed the clothing for the plantation household.
Food was mostly what the slaves could grow in their "off-hours" with what ever reject scraps of meat the white family didn't want. (Would anyone invent something like chitlens if they had access to a rump roast?)
The so-called chitlins, or chitterlings "delicacy," is largely the product of poverty during the post-war economic climate among the black communities. They were the only scraps that they could afford. Food on plantations before the war consisted primarily of the products obtained from the domestic gardens. In this sense many large plantations were like micro-cities that sustained their own populations on what they grew.
Housing was dirt-floor shacks containing multiple "families".
Indeed they were, yet housing still costs something. It should be similarly noted that those shacks were not of substantial difference in quality from the dwellings of most of the working class in that era, be they tenements in the big cities or single room dirt floor cabins in the woods.
Medical care was spotty at best.
Medical care from the era was spotty at best in its entirity for simple lack of knowledge. The assertion that slaves, in most cases, were not provided with what was available defies economic sense because of the investment factor (for example, are you going to deny a slave that cost 100 dollars a dollar's worth of medicine for an illness that prevents him from working or, worse, kills him when untreated?)
President Davis would have done anything HONORABLE to have avoided bloodshed.
sadly, the damnyankee elites wanted a war. for them war was a positive good.
free dixie,sw
Perhaps you'd be interested in the view of the Detroit Free Press about the conditions the Union placed on Southern states (The Memphis Daily Appeal, [Atlanta, Georgia], February 26, 1864):
How the States are Brought Back Into the UnionNot all the Northern papers endorse Lincoln’s farce of "dragooning" the seceded States "back into the Union." The Detroit Free Press (the organ of General Cass) says of the game being played in Arkansas:
The President says to the people of Arkansas: I will allow you to return to the Union, but not under your own Constitution and the Constitution of the United States. You must first join the abolition party, and next you must make – or I will make for you – an abolition Constitution and abolition laws. If you don’t do this, I’ll send an army there to thrash you till you do it. I’ll send Northern politicians to rule you – some consistent bantam like T. W. Lockwood, or some virtuous chieftain like Colonel Dorus Fox [I think he may have been charged with buying commissions]. I’ll make you a Constitution and enforce it upon you by bayonets, and the First Michigan Ethiopian. It is my will, and you must submit. You must accept this "unconditional Unionism." The interests of God and humanity require it, and the people of Massachusetts wish it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.