The Confederate battle flag continues to be a symbol of regional pride

freelancestar ^ | 2/10/2004 | BUFFY RIPLEY

[stainlessbanner]

IS THE Confederate battle flag a symbol of hate? Although there are certain connotations that have been improperly associated with the Confederate flag, there are still many people within the American population who display it to show pride in their heritage.

Heritage, not hate.

The Confederate States of America was a compilation of southern states that seceded from the United States of America. Following the formation of this new government, the grievances between the North and South produced hostility and warfare.

Our differences divided us as a nation. Yet during that period, there arose a certain Southern solidarity that people cannot forget.

A liberal federal judge has banned the display of Confederate flags in cemeteries near our area. Could he, not the Southerners who revere the flag, be the prejudiced one?

Only two days out of 365 in a year are people allowed to fly the Confederate battle flag in Point Lookout in Maryland. There have been many appeals, but the judge concluded that it "could" cause hateful uprisings and counter-actions to prevent the flag from flying.

So much for those who died during the Civil War bravely fighting for the South. 3,300 Confederate soldiers died at Point Lookout Cemetery, and the flag would commemorate their lives and their deaths.

Although many people do not understand or agree with what the Confederate States of America stood for, these men gave their lives and had the courage to stand up for what they believed in.

In fact, Confederates fought for the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--states' rights, no taxation without fair representation and freedom from oppressive government.

They weren't fighting for hate. They weren't fighting to destroy a race.

They were fighting to preserve the government that they had chosen--the Confederate States of America--the government that allowed them to preserve their own way of life.

Fact: The overwhelming majority of Southerners never owned slaves. Slavery as an institution was fading, and making way for more pragmatic agricultural practices, including the use of immigrant labor.

Too many people today do not agree with what Southern soldiers stood for, often basing their opinion on faulty history or willful ignorance. That doesn't mean that we should respect the soldiers from Dixie any less.

Ignorance has turned the South's past into a history of hate. I have grown up in the South. I am not racist. I consider myself to be an open-minded person.

I do have Dixie Pride, though.

I grew up in a Civil War town that has a Confederate Cemetery in the middle of it. There's even a store called "Lee's Outpost."

Yes, there are people who live in Fredericksburg who consider the Confederate flag as a symbol of hatred and racism. However, they do not know what it is truly about.

The war between the states was a time when brother fought against brother. It was a time when people didn't have the choice to be passive.

Ultimately, regardless of one's feelings about the flag, banning the Confederate flag is unconstitutional under the Bill of Rights. Flying the flag is considered a form of speech--and if it is legal to burn an American flag, it should be legal without question to fly the Confederate one.

I do own a Confederate flag. I'm a Southerner, proud of my heritage, and I take pride in the fact that my ancestors rose to the occasion and fought for their form of government.

They did not give their lives to protect slavery in the South. They did not die to keep African-Americans from sharing the same liberties and freedoms that they were blessed with. They believed they were fighting for their families, homes and states against an oppressive government in the North.

The book "The South Was Right" provides many facts to support this.

In the end, it almost doesn't matter why they fought. We claim to be a nation that believes in freedom of speech, where everyone can have their own beliefs and not be looked down on for it.

Are we or aren't we?

What makes this country great is that we have the right to make up our own minds about things. People are asked if they believe in freedom of speech. They reply, "Yes, of course I believe in freedom of speech."

Yet when they don't agree with the speech, sometimes they contradict themselves.

As a nation with millions of citizens, we will never agree on any principles or ideas as a whole--except for the fact that freedom cannot be replaced, and rights cannot be sacrificed.

So why should the Confederate flag be an exception? Free speech applies to everyone, and Southerners have great reasons to be proud of their past.

BUFFY RIPLEY is a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[rustbucket]

I'm trying to see if neo-Confederates can explain how an enlisted man in the U.S. Army (Ryan Anderson) betraying his country is deplorable but a colonel (Robert Lee) doing so is grand and glorious.

The same meaningless question can be posed about George Washington.

[WhiskeyPapa]

I'm trying to see if neo-Confederates can explain how an enlisted man in the U.S. Army (Ryan Anderson) betraying his country is deplorable but a colonel (Robert Lee) doing so is grand and glorious.

The same meaningless question can be posed about George Washington.

Of course that is complete nonsense. Washington had a greivance, Lee did not.

But you agree that both Lee and Washington went outside the law.

Walt

[Gianni]

Anderson did not resign, nor tell his superiors the purpose of his (nonexistent) resignation, nor was he defending his home, blah blah blah.

This has beed explained to Party-pants ad-nauseum, meaning he's just trolling here. I had expected more of you, Walt; something I am coming to realize is more a mistake everyday. At one point, you at least carried an air of honesty and earnestness in your support of Lincoln and the Unionists. The opinion is one that is widely held, and probably 90% of those who do hold it can defend it without the need to resort to the sort of dishonesty and petty insults that you and not-so-grand-old-partisan bring to these threads.

The Union cause was one that rallied hundreds of thousands of good Americans to it's banner. Surely there's more to support it than your idiotic accusations of treason on the part of America's greatest general.

[rustbucket]

Of course that is complete nonsense. Washington had a greivance, Lee did not.

And Washington had wooden teeth. Lee had a fine sense of duty, honor, country, which is why many among us honor him.

But you agree that both Lee and Washington went outside the law.

Some argue that way. Even Lee did not think highly of secession. But I feel it was legal under the Tenth Amendment. As Jefferson Davis said of secession, "It was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of the States."

[GOPcapitalist]

Again, someone can try to explain the difference between what Ryan Anderson did and what Robert Lee did.

Happily. Anderson swore allegiance to his state, Washington, then gave aid to a foreign organization with whom we are essentially engaged in active warfare. He sought to assist an enemy that was trying to attack his home.

Lee swore allegiance to his state, Virginia, and sided himself with her when she was threatened and attacked by a group of other states at Lincoln's command. He defended his home from an enemy attacker.

[GOPcapitalist]

So in other words, you don't know who that picture is of or how he got his scars. As I said, absent that information virtually nothing can be said about him other than that he is scarred. He could have been abused, he could have been whipped with the cat o' nine tails for a crime as was a common punishment of the day, or he could have tried to scratch his back on a cactus.

Your newspaper "specimens" are similarly unrevealing as virtually none have sufficient detail on them. While no doubt some on that list were genuine abuse cases, it is equally likely that many were not. Some appear to describe simple injuries that virtually anyone could have gotten. Missing fingers were common biproducts of farm labor in the day, especially from operating gins, threshers, and other machinery. Millstone cutting and certain types of blacksmithing could be particularly gruesome in the harm they did to the human hands over many years. Being branded with a letter was a standard punishment for all sorts of criminals in the day, white or black. Murderers who were not in a sufficiently high enough degree to be hanged got an "M" stamped on their hands or arms or foreheads. "A" could mean adultery and so forth. Notches in the ear were also common punishments for crime. As for whippings, you could show me any given ship in His Majesty's Navy in the early 19th century (and there were thousands of them all over the world especially during Napoleon's escapades) and I could show you at least one white male anglo saxon protestant Englishman on board each of them who has scarring on his back that is comparable to any slave. It doesn't make that scarring right or the cat any less barbaric but it does put things into historical perspective as opposed to your attempted shock tactics through unidentified photographs.

[GOPcapitalist]

We know he wasn't entitled to a fair trial, don't we?

By today's standards probably not. By the standards of the first half of the 19th century it was probably no worse than any non-civilian jury proceeding anywhere in the world, and that includes practically everything unless you were a male property owner. A good comparison is on naval vessels where punishment occurred at sea and at the arbitrary whim of an officer. Minor offenses earned lashings with the cat o' nine tails that were every bit as gruesome, brutal, and painful as any whipping under slavery. A major offense including but not limited to so much as striking a person of superior rank was punishable by execution. Nor were some of the other penalties any more harsh than what the jury courts themselves did - things like branding an "M" for murderer on somebody or clipping a piece of his ear. Juries gave those sentences out as much as any non-jury proceeding. Granted, that doesn't make any of it less barbaric but it does put things into perspective.

[GOPcapitalist]

Are you saying that you are shocked that some high school kid drew a picture of a machine gun and a rebel flag?

That's called doodling, Walt. It's what high school kids do when the teacher gets boring. You probably did it yourself sometime in school, assuming you went. Virtually everyone in my classes sure did - even the nerds, only instead of doodling machine guns they drew pictures of Worf and the starship Enterprise. And us southerners - yeah, we drew rebel flags as well. Also a lot of Texas flags, american flags, airplanes, soldiers, and all the other stuff that your average 16 year old who is bored out of his mind as some incompetent kooky English teacher tries to torture him by "interpreting" left wing passages from Walt Whitman, Kate Chopin, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings or any other one of Maya Angelou's dreadful "autobiographies." In fact, some of those doodles may even depict their object being used to bludgeon caricatures of the aforementioned "poets" as a teenager's way of dealing with the intolerably horrendous tripe those individuals and the public school system that spoon feeds them to us represent.

Posting a doodle from one former teenager who over a decade later went off the deep end, joined the mohammedan cult, and attempted to launch a terror war is accordingly just plain silly. Every single male on death row in any given state probably drew "violent" doodles as a kid in school, but that means absolutely nothing because so did everybody else who is not in jail right now.

[GOPcapitalist]

Oops. "stuff that your" = "stuff that interests your"

[4CJ]

We know. It is a fact that slaves did not enjoy the same rights white people did ...

With all due respect sir, and I honestly mean that, I know that evil men - Northern & Southern, black and white - have abused slaves. And blacks - not just slaves, both in the North and the South - did not enjoy the same "rights" as white people. In my 727, the slave Potter Jackson was abused by a Yankee slave captain, while another was defended in court - also by a Yankee. I found one case where a white man was sentenced to a life sentence for killing a slave.

In reference to the picture that Walt habitually posts, my comments were not intended to mean that "he mighta had it coming", only to find out the details surrounding the incident - if from an abusive master - northern or southern then it was wrong. One could post a picture of Bonnie & Clyde and evoke tremendous outrage if the antecedent details are not provided.

[captnorb]

AMEN!!! May it rise again.......

[nolu chan]

"[It] was illegal, and in my view monstrous." ~Gideon Welles~

A MONSTROUS ACT
The Appointment of Samuel Barron

LINK

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 4.

[Page 318]

To Gideon Welles

(Confidential.)

Executive Mansion

April 1, 1861.

To the Secretary of the Navy.

Dear Sir:

You will issue instructions to Captain Pendergrast, commanding the home squadron, to remain in observation at Vera Cruz---important complications in our foreign relations rendering the presence of an officer of rank there of great importance.

Captain Stringham will be directed to proceed to Pensacola with all possible despatch, and assume command of that portion of the home squadron stationed off Pensacola. He will have confidential instructions to cooperate in every way with the commander of the land forces of the United States in that neighborhood.

The instructions to the army officers, which are strictly confidential, will be communicated to Captain Stringham after he arrives at Pensacola.

Captain Samuel Barron will relieve Captain Stringham in charge of the Bureau of detail.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

P.S. As it is very necessary at this time to have a perfect knowledge of the personnel of the navy, and to be able to detail such officers for special purposes as the exigencies of the service may require. I request that you will instruct Captain Barron to proceed and organize the Bureau of detail in the manner best adapted to meet the wants of the navy, taking cognizance of the discipline of the navy generally, detailing all officers for duty, taking charge of the recruiting of seamen, supervising charges made against officers, and all matters relating to duties which must be best understood by a sea officer. You will please afford Captain Barron any facility for accomplishing this duty, transferring to his department

[Page 319]

the clerical force heretofore used for the purposes specified. It is to be understood that this officer will act by authority of Secretary of the Navy, who will exercise such supervision as he may deem necessary.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln, wrote:

Late in the afternoon of the 1st of April, while at my dinner at Willard’s, where I then boarded, Mr. Nicolay, the private secretary of the President, brought me a large package from the President. I immediately broke the envelope, and found it contained several papers of importance, some of which were of a singular character, being in the nature of instructions or orders from the Executive relative to naval matters of which I knew the President was not informed, and about which I had not been consulted. One of these papers relating to the government of the Navy Department was more singular and extraordinary than either of the others, and was as follows:

[Here Welles quoted the document I have quoted above.]

... I went without a moment’s delay to the President with the package in my hand. ... I then read the foregoing document, the body of which was in the handwriting of Captain Montgomery C. Meigs of the army, the postscript in that of Lieutenant D. D. Porter of the navy. ...

... I informed the President that I had no confidence in the fidelity of Captain Barron, who was by this singular order, issued in his name, to be forced into official and personal intimacy with me, and virtually to take charge of the Navy Department. ... I called his attention to the order, if I was so to consider it, to organize a Bureau of Detail in the Navy Department, and to transfer to a naval officer a portion of the clerical force and civil administrative duties which by law belonged to the Secretary of the Navy -- duties which the Secretary had no right to evade and no legal authority to depute to another. The bureaus of the Department, he was doubtless aware, were established by law and not by an executive order. That this proposition to make a naval officer Secretary de facto, to transfer him from his professional to civil duties without responsibility, was illegal, and in my view monstrous.

It conflicted with the whole theory of our Government and the principles on which the Navy Department was organized and established. The Senate was entitled to a voice in the appointment of chiefs of bureaus. ... Barron was one of the last men I could trust in this emergency with these matters of detail and departmental business.

Neither the President nor Secretary had power to create a new bureau or to bring a professional naval officer into the Department, and devolve on him the functions which, the law imposed on the Secretary.

... I then went on to say that Captain Barron was an accomplished officer and gentleman with whom I had personally pleasant relations, but that his feelings, sympathies, and associations were notoriously with the secessionists; that he was prominent in a clique of naval exclusives, most of whom were tainted with secession; that I was not prepared to say he would desert in the crisis which seemed approaching, but I had my apprehensions that such would be the case; that while I should treat him courteously and with friendly consideration, and hoped most sincerely he would not prove false, I could not consent be should have the position nor give him the trust which his instructions imposed.

... He remembered, he said, that both Mr. Seward and Porter had something to say about Barron as superior to almost any officer in the naval service.... There was at that time a clique of prominent naval officers, as there has been on more than one occasion, anxious to take possession of and control the Navy Department. Many of them were in Washington, and most of them were inclined to secession, of whom Barron was perhaps chief.

... Barron,conspicuous as a courtier, was the agent who had negotiated and perfected the agreement between Messrs. Holt and Toucey, of Buchanan’s Cabinet, and Messrs. Mallory and Colonel Chase on the part of the secessionists, by which the Government was not to reinforce Fort Pickens unless it should be attacked. He was a cunning and skilful manager, possessed of considerable diplomatic talents, and was deep in all the secession intrigues in Washington at that period.

When I inquired the object of detaching Commodore Stringham from duty in the Department where I had placed him, the President said he had no reason to give, and in regard to issuing instructions to Commodore Pendergrast he was equally ignorant. He knew no cause for either. There was, however, a manifest purpose in some quarter to get rid of the presence of these experienced and trusted officers, and also to get Barron into a responsible position.

The President was confident, and I became satisfied on inquiry that Commodore Stringham had no part in the matter; but there had been an improper movement, I will not say intrigue, in some quarter to set him, who had my confidence, aside for Barron, who had not.

Attempts to absolve Lincoln of responsibility by putting it on Seward, Meigs and Porter are unavailing. It is undeniable that, on April 1, 1861, Lincoln knew about the involvement of Seward, Meigs and Porter in attempting to subvert the law and place Samuel Barron effectively in charge of the U.S. Navy. If Lincoln had simply been duped by these men, his reaction should have been fury. Heads should have rolled. What actually happened?

Look at what Lincoln issued on April 1, 1861.

April 1, 1861 To: Lt. D.D. Porter, USN

You will proceed to New York and with least possible delay assume command of any steamer available.

Proceed to Pensacola Harbor, and, at any cost or risk, prevent any expedition from the main land reaching Fort Pickens, or Santa Rosa.

You will exhibit this order to any Naval Officer at Pensacola, if you deem it necessary, after you have established yourself within the harbor.

This order, its object, and your destination will be communicated to no person whatever, until you reach the harbor of Pensacola.

Signed: Abraham Lincoln
Recommended signed: Wm. H. Seward

April 1, 1861
Telegram
To: Commandant, Brooklyn Navy Yard

Fit out Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible moment, under sealed orders. Orders by confidential messenger go forward tomorrow.

Signed: Abraham Lincoln

April 1, 1861
To: Commandant, Brooklyn Navy Yard

You will fit out the Powhatan without delay. Lieutenant Porter will relieve Captain Mercer in command of her. She is bound on secret service; and you will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out.

Signed: Abraham Lincoln

William Seward continued as Secretary of State and countersigned orders for Lt. Porter to take command of the USS Powhatan without the knowledge of the Secretary of the Navy. The commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard was specifically instructed, "you will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out." Lincoln continued to engage in this intrigue to subvert the Navy.

On April 6, 1861, Lt. Porter took the Powhatan from its rightful captain, Captain Mercer, and set sail. The Powhatan was to be the flagship for the Sumter expedition and carried material essential for the mission.

Lt. Porter did not reappear until April 17, 1861 when he arrived off the coast of Florida. Speaking of Fort Pickens, Gideon Welles wrote:

"... the fort was again relieved and reinforced before Lieutenant Porter made his appearance on the 17th with the Powhatan, having on board the launches and men destined for Sumter.

Gideon Welles wrote:

General Meigs declares that “the overt act of interference with the navy most complained of” is the matter of the Powhatan. This is a serious mistake. Highly improper as was that interference, it is vastly less exceptionable and reprehensible than the executive order to create a new naval bureau and make Barron chief, which was at the same time and by the same parties extracted from the President. Was Captain Meigs, in whose handwriting this mysterious order first appeared detailing Barron for Department duty, the author of this intrigue? Was Lieutenant D. D. Porter, who wrote the remarkable postscript to that remarkable order directing the Secretary of the Navy to establish a new bureau and do other illegal acts, guilty of that impropriety, disrespect, and interference with his superior? Or was there some one else who attempted thus to interfere with the organization of the Navy Department, and to place a rebel captain in a position for “detailing all officers for duty,” whereby the most important commands could be given to rebels; “supervising charges made against officers," which would enable rebel officers to escape conviction and punishment? This interference with the organization and administration of the Navy Department was attempted by some one. General Meigs would brush it over; says he has “no distinct recollection" of this order and postscript, which was published in THE GALAXY for November; that “of details within the Navy Department, such as are referred to in the postscript in regard to Captain Barron, he had no knowledge, and upon them could not have given advice.” Nevertheless, this strange document -- an executive order, creating without authority of law a new bureau in the Navy Department; placing a rebel captain in charge of its operations; empowering him to detail all officers for duty, to supervise charges made against officers, etc., was written by himself and Lieutenant Porter -- a joint labor and a divided responsibility. Whether they originated the measure or were the mere instruments of others, has never been disclosed.

What became of these officers who either conspired with, or duped Lincoln?

William Seward continued as Secretary of State and continued to implement a surreptitious plan to frustrate the navy mission to Sumter. Orders were issued by Lincoln directing that the Navy Department be kept in the dark.

Army Captain Meigs became a general.

Navy Lt. Porter became an admiral.

And what of U.S. Navy Captain Barron?

As Gideon Welles writes:

A few weeks after this attempt to thrust him into the Department, the greater portion of this clique of exclusives sent in their resignations, deserted the flag, and were dismissed the service. Barron, foremost among them, was placed by the rebels in Richmond in command of Fort Hatteras....

Barron, ... took rank as captain in the Confederate naval service from the 26th of March, five days before this executive order to create a new bureau and establish him as regent of the Navy Department ....

[DakotaDeacon]

Poor kid. Swallowed the party line, hook, line and sinker.

Sure, he's got a free speech right to fly the Confederate flag. He can wear a KKK pointy white hat while he's at it, and swear 'til he's blue in the face that the Klan is just misunderstood. And other people have a free speech right to tell him how much they hate him for being such a putz.

And I've got a free speech right to tell him that the Civil War was about slavery, pure and simple. The so-called "state's rights" is code for the right to own slaves.

Cobalt, be blissfully ignorant if you chose, but don't try to pass it off as truth. The War of Northern Aggression was over:
1) a punitive northern tariff, which essentially forced Southerners to pay higher prices on goods to support the federal government, which invested funds to subsidize Northern industry;
2) disputes about the constitutional nature of the union, particularly as federal laws increasingly threatened the state sovereignty guaranteed when the US was formed;
3) Lincoln's desire to preserve the union;
4) Lincoln's call for troops to invade states that had seceded already.
The end of slavery was a by-product of the war, NOT the cause.
It'ss the ignorance you stated as fact that has helped fuel the desire of some to have the South forget it's heritage. Unfortunately for you and others like you, it's not going to happen. The more you try to make us forget, the harder we're going to dig in, and the tighter our grip will be to preserve it.

[nolu chan]

It is a fact that slaves did not enjoy the same rights white people did, including but not limited to the right to a trial by jury, protection against self incrimination, double jeopardy, etc. That's a fact, so there is no "who knows" about it.

It should be noted that when the pic was published in 1863, neither white nor black enjoyed the right to a trial by jury, protection against self incrimination, etc.

[nolu chan]

Your newspaper "specimens" are similarly unrevealing as virtually none have sufficient detail on them.

http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Dickens/americannotes/americannotes18.htm

Those are not newspaper specimens. That is Charles Dickens. Look at the link.

[PeaRidge]

"As new cotton lands opened up to agriculture, the demand for slaves increased. In the 1820s and 1830s states like Eastern states like Virginia, which had been having agricultural and economic troubles, became centers of slave breeding for the slave trade and this helped the economy."

(repeat) Second time lately you have used that assertion. Direct me to your source for that.

[WhiskeyPapa]

While no doubt some on that list were genuine abuse cases, it is equally likely that many were not.

The heritage is hate.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Your newspaper "specimens" are similarly unrevealing as virtually none have sufficient detail on them.

They are what they are.

This is from a newspaper.

"The Richmond Examiner stated their choice in unflinching language:

It is all an hallucination to suppose that we are ever going to get rid of slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to do so. It is a thing that we cannot do without;that is righteous, profitable, and permanent, and that belongs to Southern society as inherently, intrinsically, and durably as the white race itself. Southern men should act as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant, in letters of fire, that the negro is here, and here forever—is our property, and ours forever—is never to be emancipated—is to be kept hard at work and in rigid subjection all his days."

This perhaps is not.

"Senator A. G. ' Brown said September 4, 1858, that he wanted Cuban, Mexican, and Central American territory for slavery; "I would spread the blessings of slavery . . . to the uttermost ends of the earth." Such utterances treated slavery as permanent, and assumed that it must be defended at every point."

-- "The Coming Fury" by Bruce Catton (both excerpts)

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

With all due respect sir, and I honestly mean that, I know that evil men - Northern & Southern, black and white - have abused slaves.

Which, I suppose, by implication, makes it okay.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

1) a punitive northern tariff, which essentially forced Southerners to pay higher prices on goods to support the federal government, which invested funds to subsidize Northern industry;

Can you speak to the nature of these investments?

In point of fact, the bulk of federal revenue came from the tariff; southern interests had worked for decades to strangle the power of the government, some said at the time, as part of a 30 conspiracy to break the Union. Southerners had controlled the government for decades prior to the ACW. When that hold was threatened, they tried to bolt.

"The total revenues of the Federal government in 1860 amounted to a mere $56,054,000. The population of the whole US in 1860 was 33,443,321. Thus, Federal taxation per capita was less than $2 per person. Even if the 9,103,332 people in the soon-to-secede Southern states paid all of the Federal taxation in 1860 (which they did not), their per capita cost would still have been less than $7 for the entire year. From these inconsequential sums, another secessionist myth has been created and sustained for 140 years.

Be that as it may, the record shows that tariffs were an irritant, however irrational, to Southern interests up to 1846. In that year, accordingly, Federal tariffs were generally lifted in response to Southern pressures and in favor of free trade. From 1846 until early 1861, what was essentially a free trade regime existed in the whole of the USA. It was only after (and because) rebellion broke out that the US Congress passed the hated Morrill tariffs.

It is instructive to note again that the tariffs that the South protested before the ACW were actually taxes on goods and services imported into the South. In the real world, these imports included significant proportions of luxury goods such as fine British furniture and whiskey, French fashions and perfumes and Cuban rums and cigars. Most of these things were available from the North, and Northern interests wanted to protect their markets in both North and South by adding costs to their foreign competition. Likewise, the South also wanted to protect its markets in the North on products produced in the South but not the North. Accordingly, well before the ACW, southern legislators in the US Congress sought and received substantial tariffs on imports impinging on the domestic markets of Southern agricultural products. For example, the prewar sugar growers of the deep South and the hemp growers of the upper South got protective Federal tariffs on imported products from their foreign competition.

In point of fact, the long-standing Federal sugar import tariff imposed to protect Louisiana sugar growers was extensively debated at the Montgomery Convention and, in spite the highly-touted Confederate devotion to free trade principles, was retained in the Confederacy through out the ACW. Additionally, the Confederacy placed tariffs on exports, including a duty on exported cotton. I repeat here for emphasis --- tariffs on Southern cotton exports were prohibited by the US Constitution. So much for high secessionist principles concerning tariffs! They talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk, as goes the modern formula for hypocrisy.

It is humorous to note that the prewar Federal iron import tariff, so despised by Secessionist firebrands, was continued by the Confederacy after some of the realities of fiscal and industrial policy set in. On 16 February 1861 the Provisional Confederate Congress blithely passed a bill providing for free import of railway iron. A month later, however, fiscal realities set in and an ad valorem import tax was imposed on such goods at the rate of 15% --- a rate confirmed in the Confederate Tariff Act of 21 May 1861. For further details, see Robert C. Black's THE RAILROADS OF THE CONFEDERACY (Chapel Hill, NC: U. of NC Press, 1998)."

This text originally appeared on the AOL ACW forum.

Walt