Lincoln holiday on its way out (West Virginia)

West Virginia Gazette Mail ^ | 9-8-2005 | Phil Kabler

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Lincoln holiday on its way out

By Phil Kabler Staff writer

A bill to combine state holidays for Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays into a single Presidents’ Day holiday cleared its first legislative committee Wednesday, over objections from Senate Republicans who said it besmirches Abraham Lincoln’s role in helping establish West Virginia as a state.

Senate Government Organization Committee members rejected several attempts to retain Lincoln’s birthday as a state holiday.

State Sen. Russ Weeks, R-Raleigh, introduced an amendment to instead eliminate Columbus Day as a paid state holiday. “Columbus didn’t have anything to do with making West Virginia a state,” he said. “If we have to cut one, let’s cut Christopher Columbus.”

Jim Pitrolo, legislative director for Gov. Joe Manchin, said the proposed merger of the two holidays would bring West Virginia in line with federal holidays, and would effectively save $4.6 million a year — the cost of one day’s pay to state workers.

Government Organization Chairman Ed Bowman, D-Hancock, said the overall savings would be even greater, since by law, county and municipal governments must give their employees the same paid holidays as state government.

“To the taxpayers, the savings will be even larger,” he said.

The bill technically trades the February holiday for a new holiday on the Friday after Thanksgiving. For years, though, governors have given state employees that day off with pay by proclamation.

Sen. Sarah Minear, R-Tucker, who also objected to eliminating Lincoln’s birthday as a holiday, argued that it was misleading to suggest that eliminating the holiday will save the state money.

“It’s not going to save the state a dime,” said Minear, who said she isn’t giving up on retaining the Lincoln holiday.

Committee members also rejected an amendment by Sen. Steve Harrison, R-Kanawha, to recognize the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Lincoln Day.”

“I do believe President Lincoln has a special place in the history of West Virginia,” he said.

Sen. Randy White, D-Webster, said he believed that would create confusion.

“It’s confusing to me,” he said.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, suggested that the state could recognize Lincoln’s proclamation creating West Virginia as part of the June 20 state holiday observance for the state’s birthday.

Proponents of the measure to eliminate a state holiday contend that the numerous paid holidays - as many as 14 in election years — contribute to inefficiencies in state government.

To contact staff writer Phil Kabler, use e-mail or call 348-1220.

[PeaRidge]

1763........."At this time in Massachusetts, there were sixty-three distilleries, and thirty-five distilleries in Rhode Island..."

Sounds like a lot of consumption going on up there.

[Heyworth]

The document does not define that item, but you can define it for yourself, if you like.

Man, you just can't ever admit that you're wrong, can you? Okay, I choose to define it as Steam Boats, and I've got corroboration from a variety of sources to show that I'm right and that the number of steam boats arriving in New Orleans in any year of the period is much more like 3000 than 300. For instance:

"the first steamboat came downriver in 1812. In 1821, 287 steamboats arrived in New Orleans; by 1826, there were 700 steamboat arrivals. In 1845, 2,500 steamboats were recorded, and during the 1850's an average of 3,000 steamboats a year called at the city."

http://www.madere.com/history.html

" By 1834, the number of steamboat arrivals in New Orleans annually was 2,300, indicative of that port's trade. "

http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/steam.html
(are you going to claim that steamboat traffic had declined 90% between the 1830s and 1850s?

Finally, I'd point out that the heading on the table specifies steam boats and I contend that they wouldn't then have a column heading for that labelled "st. ships" and another labelled "s. boats" if the latter wasn't the steam boats of the heading.

[Skywalk]

Don't have time to wade through 1000 posts, but do the Neo-Confederates not remember the "Wimot Proviso," "36'30," John Brown, "popular sovereignty," the Fugitive Slave Law, Kansas-nebraska act, Dred Scott, the Free Soil party, the annexation of all of Texas while going to war with Mexico with the compromise to take only HALF of Oregon in the North(not slaveholding territory) or the discussions of taking Cuba or land further south, and that one guy(can't recall his name) who actually did rule Guatemala or some C American country for a short time---

The sectional conflict was fueled by slavery and the cultural and economic differences created by the institution.

[Skywalk]

"Founders, a majority of whom were slaveowners. Or were they the good slaveowners, while their children were the evil slaveowners. Get over yourself, your little hyperbole fools nobody."

Actually, I believe there's a line by Jefferson on slavery, you know the "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and his wrath terrible(or swift, whatever)"

The previous generation had believed slavery a 'necessary evil' and that one day it would be gone. As abolitionist sentiment increased, the slaveowning South became defensive and asserted a positive identity to slaveholding. The idea of the restriction and destruction of the institution was no more in the South. Which happens to be when the sectional conflict really began.

one writer even commented that slavery was the greatest form of "socialism" on earth. the talk of "wage slaves" in the North was also quite common from pro-slavery Southerners.

[Heyworth]

Spin, spin, spin. The fact is that the four states that bothered to lay out a declaration of causes did so as a public statement of the reasons for their actions. The secession conventions established committees to draw up these documents, and the body of the conventions voted to approve them. To call them "non-binding" willfully misses the point. The ordinances are simple legal documents saying "we're out of here." The declarations were approved documents of the conventions laying out their reasons. Clearly they were expressing not only the thinking of the convention, but how they wanted to present their reasoning to the world.

Out of the 21 total declarations, ordinances, and other secession documents only 6 mention slavery in any context beyond a geographical reference (and only 5 of them mention it at substantial length - the sixth is in a single brief clause).

How many mention tariffs? Georgia does. South Carolina does in Rhett's appeal to the other states. Who else? And by "geographical reference" do you mean the constant references in the documents of the regions as either 'slave-holding" and "non-slave-holding". That gives away the game right there.

(interestingly enough half that document is a list of grievances against the north for tax hikes and tariffs).

More like less than a third, but what slavery talk is there is prime stuff. "Experience has proved that slaveholding States cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding States. Indeed, no people can ever expect to preserve its rights and liberties, unless these be in its own custody. To plunder and oppress, where plunder and oppression can be practiced with impunity, seems to be the natural order of things."

Man, talk about irony challenged. Then there's the last line: "We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States." Not a confederacy of low-tariff, foreign-shipper-using states. A confederacy of slave-holding states.

[mac_truck]

Your original contention was that the South owned a large shipping industry...

Nonsense. My original contention was there was nothing prohibiting the South from competing with the North for shipping, including geography or having an "established shipping industry" at the time the Navigation laws were enacted. Something you claimed they didn't have.

Using your own sources, I've shown that Charleston was one of the top four seaports in the United States when Congress enacted the navigation laws and tariffs on imports. I've also shown through public records the volume and variety of both products shipped, and international destinations for those products, about the time South Carolina ratified the US Constitution. From the Charleston example alone, a reasonable person would conclude that the South had an "established shipping industry" that could compete with the North at that time.

The fact that the South didn't "own a large shipping industry" had nothing to do with Federal law, warehouses, or their competitors, and everything to do with the planter mentality that infected the decision making of their effete elected officials. Apparently I am not alone in drawing this conclusion either. This is from Debow's Review On Direct Foreign Trade of the South in 1852

"It was in 1837-8, along there-when the British government was about writing Q. E. D. to the practical demonstration which the "Sirius," the "Liverpool," and the " Great Western," were just then giving to the great problem of Ocean Steam Navigation. France, the French, and the King of the French, were burning with the desire not to be outdone by England. They had the money ready, and were looking for a port on this side to which they might start an opposition line of steamers. It was then proposed that the South should offer to take part of the stock, provided the French would select Norfolk as the terminus for their line-and thus get the line into the hands of Americans; for we "felt it in our bones," that, even at that day, we could beat John Bull. We did succeed in impressing one gentleman, at least, with our notions. Him we knew well: he was an enterprising go-ahead fellow. Requiescat! Captivated with the idea of subsidizing the French in the noble enterprise, he petitioned the Virginia legislature to grant him the charter for an Atlantic Steam Navigation Company. He wanted no privileges, no favors, but simply the charter; for he was sure that with the charter and his energies, he could gain the French over as allies, and induce them to select Norfolk for the American terminus of their line. The legislature refused the charter. The French, meeting with no sympathy on this side, receiving no overtures fromn the South to send their boats to Norfolk, proceeded to build their vessels. They selected New-York for their American station..had the legislature of Virginia granted that Ocean Steam Navigation Charter, Norfolk would at this day have been the centre of steamship enterprise for the United States. The French steamers would have been built there; they would have been commanded and controlled by Americans who would never forget their sugar, nor make their passengers sour. This would have established foundries, machine shops, and ship yards at Norfolk, and have placed her ten or fifteen years ahead of New-York in the steamship business. Norfolk would then have been enabled to get the contracts from the Government for establishing those lines of splendid steamers that are now giving such a tremendous impetus to the business, the trade, travel and traffic of NewYork. The lines to the Isthmus would have belonged to Norfolk. Hers would probably have been the Havre and Bremen lines. And the Old Dominion might have claimed also what is now the " Collins' Line." Geographically speaking, Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the business of the Atlantic seaboard. It is midway the coast. It has a back country of surprising fertility-of great capacity and resources; and as far as the approaches from the sea are concerned, its facility of ingress and egress, at all times and in all weathers, there is from Maine to Georgia, from the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, nothing like Norfolk. The waters'which flow past Norfolk into the sea, divide the producing from the conisuming states of the Atlantic slope-the agricultural from the manufacturing-the ice ponds of the North from the cotton fields at the South-the potato patch from the rice plantation — the miner from the planter. And these same waters unite at this one place the natural channels that lead from the most famous regions in the country for corn, wheat and tobacco, to the great commercial marts.

[mac_truck]

..and that one guy(can't recall his name) who actually did rule Guatemala or some C American country for a short time---

I believe the man's name was William Walker, the country in question was Nicaragua, and one of the first things he did after installing himself in power was to establish slavery in the country with an eye on having the United States annex Nicaragua as a slaveholding state. A typical design that Southern plantation owners had for much of Central America and the Carribean in the 1850s.

[Gianni]

Not sure what this post is saying.

[mac_truck]

...a confederacy of low-tariff, foreign-shipper-using states. A confederacy of slave-holding states.

I missed this earlier [lol].

[stand watie]

otoh, the CHIEF reason that proves that the WBTS had little to do with chattel slavery is that lincoln, the TYRANT & GEN Grant BOTH said that the war was ONLY to "preserve the Union".

more to the point, lincoln was willing to protect slavery FOREVER, if the south would remain in the union.

the WBTS had just ONE major cause = the south wanted & WANTS our freedom from the DY elites & our own FREE REPUBLIC.

that was true in 1861 & TODAY.

every other "cause of the war" were irritants and/or minor causes.

free dixie,sw

[Heyworth]

Hey, did you learn that from the professor at Tulane? Or was it Grambling? Or was it Tuskegee?

[PeaRidge]

"Man, you just can't ever admit that you're wrong, can you?"

I think that your multiple failures to acknowledge that you were wrong on the trade issue and your failure to acknowledge that the data on tariff collection has nothing to do with point of consumption discussed earlier show not only your errors, but this recent post shows that you wish to continue to be argumentative and to find some little blemish to grab onto and point a finger in an effort to regain some credibility.

"Okay, I choose to define it as Steam Boats,"

That you did. And that is an assumption.

"and I've got corroboration from a variety of sources to show that I'm right"

You could claim that Lincoln was gay, do a Google search, and come up with all sorts of "corroboration". But it would not make you "right".

The only corroboration is a footnote on the document stating specifically what you assume.

And it is not there.

So, you are left with an assumption, not fact.

And like Gianni pointed out, you and yours have apparently forgotten the point that started this discussion.

No one except you mentioned steam boats or their relevancy.

[PeaRidge]

"Spin, spin, spin"

You have the right to your opinion, but don't confuse it with being the authority on truth.

"To call them "non-binding" willfully misses the point."

Any point is opinion unless they were binding. And they weren't.

"How many mention tariffs? Georgia does. South Carolina does in Rhett's appeal to the other states. Who else?"

As shown, all listed a variety of reasons that led them to act in secession. You are not going to throw out another red-herring, one issue cause of secession and start a new line of discussion.

"Experience has proved that slaveholding States cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding States. Indeed, no people can ever expect to preserve its rights and liberties, unless these be in its own custody. To plunder and oppress, where plunder and oppression can be practiced with impunity, seems to be the natural order of things."

And by labeling that statement as slavery oriented is "willful misrepresentation". That has to do with the Liberty of the people and the safety of their lives. But since it is obvious to all and ignored by you in another attempt at being argumentative, it is a moot point.

"Man, talk about irony challenged. Then there's the last line: 'We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States.' Not a confederacy of low-tariff, foreign-shipper-using states. A confederacy of slave-holding states."

That's right! It was a Confederacy of slave holding, low-tariff, free trade states, that was opening the Mississippi to European trade. A Confederacy of slave holding, low-tariff free trade states that would exist South of the Union.

The Union, where slavery was still very legal and being practiced, could continue on its own merry way. They then could have abolished slavery where they wanted and when they wanted.

And with secession, why would this powerful Union care about the issue of slavery. They had the West to supply the food, and the maritime industry to continue to trade with Europe.

In March of 1861, most public opinion was reflected in the following:

"In addition to all this, the commander of the Federal army, General Winfield Scott, was very emphatic in endorsing the views of the New York Tribune and other papers, to the effect that secession was the proper course for the southern people to pursue, and his oft- repeated expression, 'Wayward sisters, part in peace,' seemed to meet the full approval of the great body of the people of the North."

And why not. The slavery issue had seceded from their authority. It was no longer a problem for the Union. It was gone with the South.

[Heyworth]

So it's your contention that New Orleans only saw three hundred-some steamboat arrivals a year, when multiple sources refer to thousands?

[Gianni]

"the first steamboat came downriver in 1812. In 1821, 287 steamboats arrived in New Orleans; by 1826, there were 700 steamboat arrivals. In 1845, 2,500 steamboats were recorded, and during the 1850's an average of 3,000 steamboats a year called at the city."

Down-what?

The steamboats look like another red herring.

[Heyworth]

Try to follow along, Gianni. The discussion is how busy was the port of New Orleans, which is relevant because you guys keep trying to claim that New York so dominated shipping that the south just HAD to secede. I presented some data that showed numbers for the arrival of ships to New Orleans. Pea said that the number included steam boats/river traffic, implying that ocean shipping out of N.O. was less. For that to be correct, though, and for the column Pea says represents steam boats to actually be that (as opposed to ocean-going steam ships: st. ships vs. s. boats on the table) it would have to mean that only 300-some steam boats docked at New Orleans in the years in question, as opposed to 3000-some, a number on the chart corroborated by the other sources I presented. Pea's position is that, although the chart's title includes the word "steam boats" and includes a column headed "s. boats", that it's actually the "st.ships" column which includes steam boats, and the "s. boats" column is something unknowable.

[Gianni]

which is relevant because you guys keep trying to claim that New York so dominated shipping that the south just HAD to secede.

Nobody said this.

Anywhere.

Ever.

Sorry, you don't get to make stuff up.

[Heyworth]

Okay, so I'm being hyperbolic and sarcastic, but that's the gist of it. All this talk about navigation laws and warehousing acts and who paid for dredging Charleston harbor is all in service of your side's position, which attempts to downplay the significance of protecting slavery in the decision to secede and emphasizes trade concerns.

And for the record, I'm not questioning that those concerns did cause some sectional friction. The Nullification Crisis shows that. But it wasn't enough to cause secession. Those tensions had been around for decades and the south was still getting richer. No, the overwhelming documentation of the time shows that protecting slavery after the election of LIncoln was the proximate cause of secession.

[mac_truck]

[Heyworth] The discussion is how busy was the port of New Orleans, which is relevant because you guys keep trying to claim that New York so dominated shipping that the south just HAD to secede.

[Gianni] Nobody said this. Anywhere. Ever. Sorry, you don't get to make stuff up.

[Pearidge] Post 803 New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, was able to control the movement of Southern goods.

[Pearidge] Post 823 With the control of the transportation trade business being dominated by Northern interests, and now being vastly aided by the Warehousing Act, southern planters began to complain. Many estimated that New York merchants were making 40 cents on every dollar, but being constantly in debt to the New Yorkers, they were hardly in a position to change this state of affairs. The Northerners were in full control of the market. This would eventually turn out to be a major cause of the secession.

Thats right Gianni YOU don't get to make stuff up. So please stop disrupting this debate by distracting attention away from the core subject. Pearidge made those absurd comments [among others]on this thread and both Heyworth and I challenged him on the issue. Heyworth from the New Orleans perspective and me from the Charleston perspective. Faced with a preponderance of sourced evidence to the contrary, Pearidge is now unable to competently defend his previous assertions. Hence your distracting presence..

You're starting to remind me of a rodeo clown Gianni, albeit a lousy one...

[Gianni]

Thats right Gianni YOU don't get to make stuff up. So please stop disrupting this debate by distracting attention away from the core subject.

The core subject was whether or not Northerners feared establishment of Southern commerce and international trade, thus circumventing what had become (effectively) an abusive monopoly.

Outlined from Pearidge:

1. New York was the center for international trade.

2. Their position was strengthened by federal restrictions.

3. Their domination of shipping led to extortionate rates (40 cents/dollar).

4. The South intended to make necessary improvments to compete (Charleston Harbor).

Non and Heyworth attempted to discredit the argument by claiming that Southern participation was well established prior to secession (the point currently engaged).

Mac_truck, in addition to cheerleading and sniping, has emphasized that laws favorable to trade did not exclude Southerners, thus could not have strengthened the position of an established giant such as New York (a non-sequitur).

Heyworth (1076) argues that "busy" is somehow a measure of international trade, to the point where it requires inclusion of intra-continental shipping of goods upriver from New Orleans - also a non-sequitur.

Odd that the only argument that has not been a non-sequitur came from, yes, non-sequitur.

BTW, what have you got against rodeo clowns?