Bears repeating.
Posted on 04/25/2011 9:31:58 AM PDT by Iron Munro
I am responding to a column by Leonard Pitts Jr., a noted black columnist for The Miami Herald, entitled, "The Civil War was about slavery, nothing more" (Other Views, April 15).
I found this article to be very misleading and grossly riddled with distortions of the real causes of the War Between the States. I find it so amusing that such an educated person would not know the facts.
I am a proud native of South Carolina. I have spent my entire life in what was once the Confederate States of America. I am currently associated with Southern Heritage causes, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tampa.
It's been 150 years since brave, patriotic Southerners drove the imperialist Yankee army from Fort Sumter, S.C. It also marked the beginning of the Confederates' fight to expel this foreign army from the entire Southern homeland.
After all these years, there still exists national historical ignorance and lies about this war. The War Between the States was about states' rights — not about slavery.
Remember, the original colonies voluntarily joined the union and never gave up their individual sovereignty. These independent states always retained their right to manage their domestic affairs and to leave this voluntary association at any time.
This voluntary union was for limited reasons such as national defense from the foreign powers, one language, interstate commerce, disputes between the sovereign states and matters of foreign affairs.
When the Southern states tried to leave this union, the Northerners had to put a stop to this. The slavery issue was masterly inserted into the movement of Yankee aggression.
We are a union of independent and sovereign states free to determine our own destiny. This sovereignty is meant to be free of Yankee federal domination and control. This should still be in principle and practice today as it was before the first cannon shots at Fort Sumter.
Slavery of any people is wicked and morally wrong. Domination of one people over another is just as evil and morally wrong.
The facts are that throughout history, just about every race of people has been slaves to another people. Slavery has always been a failed institution and a dark mark in history. One-hundred years before the first slave made it to the auction blocks in Virginia, African kings were running a booming enterprise of selling their own people into slavery. It was also customary that defeated people became slaves.
Slavery as an institution worldwide was coming to an end before the War Between the States. Slavery in America would probably have come to an end within 50 years.
The great eternal lie — that the war was to "free the slaves" — is still being propagandized today by modern spin-makers, schools and even scholars. But the facts are plain and quite evident if you were to take off your Yankee sunglasses.
The Army of the Potomac invaded the South to capture, control and plunder the prosperity of Southern economic resources and its industries. This army also wanted to put a final nail in the coffin of states' rights.
If, and I say this with a big if , the War Between the States was to free the slaves, please answer these simple questions:
Why didn't President Lincoln issue a proclamation on day one of his presidency to free the slaves? Why did he wait so many years later to issue his proclamation? Why was slavery still legal in the Northern states? Before 1864, how many elected members of the imperialist Yankee Congress introduced legislation to outlaw slavery anywhere in America?
The slaves were freed — and only in territories in rebellion against the North — because the Army of the Potomac was not winning the war and Lincoln was fearful of foreign nations recognizing the Confederacy.
The Northern states needed a war to fuel their economy and stop the pending recession. The North needed rebellion in the South to cause havoc in the Confederate states. The North wanted the hard foreign currency being generated by Southern trade.
I hope this year not only marks the celebration of the brave actions of Southerners to evict the Northern Army at Fort Sumter but leads to the truthful revision of history about the war. Future generations should know the truth.
Al Mccray is a Tampa businessman and managing editor of TampaNewsAndTalk.com
In addition to affecting the cost of imported goods, the tariff raised the price of $200 million dollars of Northern manufactured goods sold to the South and West. This resulted in a transfer of $50 million to manufacturers and laborers in the East. From Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, by Thomas Prentice Kettell, New York, 1860:
The South manufactures nearly as much per head, of the white population, as does the West. Both these sections hold, however, a provincial position in relation to the East. As we have seen, heretofore, the first accumulations of capital in the country were at the East, from the earnings of navigation and the slave-trade. These were invested in "manufactures, "protected" by the tariffs imposed by the federal government. The operation of these tariffs was to tax consumers in the South and West, pro rata upon what manufactures they purchased of the East, and, by so doing, to increase Eastern capital at the expense of these two sections. The articles mostly protected, and of which the cost is enhanced to the consumers, in proportion to the duties, are manufactured in the East to the extent of $320,000,000, of which $200,000,000 are sold South and West. This gives an annual drain of $50,000,000 from the consumers of those sections, as a bonus or protection to the capital employed in manufacturing at the North.
... Although these persons [hatters, cabinet makers, tailors, etc. who immigrated from Europe] are located at the North, their employment comes almost altogether from the South. Indeed, without the growing capacity of the South to absorb larger amounts of goods annually, the North would be utterly unable to keep employed the crowds of foreign artisans which arrive each week.
Northern (i.e., "Eastern" in Kettell's analysis) manufacturers benefited from the tariff by being able to raise their prices. Many Northern laborers benefited because they had jobs because of Southern and Western purchases of Northern manufactured goods. As you pointed out, Northern consumers also paid for the same Northern goods, but at the same time many Northern consumers also got paid for making the products in question. The Southern consumer didn't have the benefit of jobs resulting from this tariff based transfer of wealth. The Southern consumer just sent his money North to buy the goods.
This sounds like the typical politician's ploy of taxing some distant group of voters to the benefit of the voters who elected him. Another modern equivalent is cities that heavily tax rental cars and hotel/motel stays so that visitors help pay for the cities' sports stadiums. I guess there is nothing new under the sun.
As I remember, the great majority of Southern and Western representatives voted against the Morrill Tariff when it passed the house in 1860. Or perhaps it was the vote in the Senate in 1861 -- can't find my old post at the moment. The Morrill Tariff essentially doubled the tariff rate. Thus, consumers from both the West and the South were being made to transfer increasing amounts of wealth to Northern manufacturers and laborers.
Actually, revenue tariffs are about the least intrusive possible way of raising needed revenue. They are collected at the ports and paid for (eventually) by the purchaser.
Compare that to our present methods of raising revenue. Surely anybody will agree they are far more intrusive into the market.
You have a better argument with regard to protective tariffs, which are indeed a governmental intrusion.However, we might want to take a look at the history of the movement for protective tariffs. They grew out of the American experience in the War of 1812, when the coast was blockaded by the British and the war effort greatly impeded by lack of industry.
During and after the war various politicians, both north and south, proclaimed we needed protection for infant industries so they would be available in any future conflict. The great proponent of protective tariffs was Henry Clay, a Kentucky slave owner.
Similar claims are still made today that American industries should be protected against "unfair foreign competition," and oddly enough many of those who consider such protection wrong in the 19th century are all for it today.
Don't pollute another thread with your useless lies. Some people may agree with you here still, but actually want to learn facts and not hear your drivel.
Which I take to mean that you don't want anyone calling you on it when you when you spout your crap.
And yet tariffs were established by the first congress, and in fact were the second act of the United States government. The Constitution gives congress the power to " lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excise." So if the argument is that tariffs are inherently unfair, blame the founding fathers. And tell me just what the preferable alternative for funding the federal government was.
“...Before proceeding, let me say...If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution...”
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Is that a Lincoln quote?
Thanks, in advance.
Yup. I thought I said.
Do you honestly think that the country would have been better off if the South had won? Chances are that the North would have become a second-tier industrial country like France while the South would have become a Baptist Banana Republic.
The expansion of Federal power after the war was a tragedy and should have been scaled back after the fighting ended. That is largely the fault of the Radical Republicans who thought that Lincoln’s peace plans were too generous. But it was the actions of the South that got the whole thing started.
I'm curious who exactly is promoting this notion.
Wouldn't that pretty much include anyone who believes, or argues, the north was motivated to fight the south by a desire to end slavery in the south?
thank you for the ping
My 10 year old daughter has just done a presentation about the war in her school in front of her class and there was a liberal north east intern from the nearby college.
He tried to challenge her about the war and said the usual crap only for my daughter to shoot him down every time.
His face was priceless, there he was trying to be the big man in front of a little girl only for the little girl to have more facts and back it up with quotes from union officers who saw black confederates and speeches from Lincoln himself
I don’t know anyone who claims this was the sole motive or even the major motive behind northern resistance to disunion.
You cannot conceive of any possible reason a northern white man might want to end slavery other than an intense affection for southern blacks?
Perhaps I can help:
Desire to financially punish those who started the war (from his perspective).
Desire to acquire millions of new voters for the Republican party.
Belief that slavery is morally wrong while still not necessarily having affection for or a belief in the full equality of blacks.
That’s three perfectly logical reasons for wanting to end slavery that have nothing to do with a love of black people. I’m sure others could think of more.
Your entire argument is a straw man. Either northerners were motivated by altruism, or they had no desire to end slavery at all, and the war was entirely about tariffs or something.
Thanks, if you did, I missed it.
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Several of my great-grands and several of my wife’s great-grands fought for the confederacy.
None of them were slave owners and most of them were share-croppers who worked right along side of slaves to eke out a living.
Why do you suppose they fought?
Lincoln I know you know even said that he was going to war to preserve the union and when these idiots state how Lincoln was a great man then they seem to forget that he was a fighting a war against Indians and taking their land away form them while killing , raping etc
yea great man that Lincoln ARF
makes me laugh when some student northern type states the north went to war to free slaves, yea OK men got their guns in ME, MA, VT etc to free blacks ARF.
agreed and go back to the 1830’s where SC was on the verge to leave back then as well but was persuaded to stay.
Up comes Lincoln and not so much forced the south to fire the first shot but did know that it would come to that with his actions.
Funny how history repeats, back then they thought it would be a short war and still today Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was supposed to be shorter that they are.
But it mostly was. The massive expansion of federal power and interference in the economy didn't really get going till the Progressive movement towards the end of the century.
The federal budget in 1880 (to pick a year) was about 6x what it was in 1860, but then the economy was 2.5x larger. The government relative to the economy was therefore between 2x and 3x larger in 1880 than in 1860.
Some considerable portion of these federal expenditures in 1880 were involved with paying down the existing debt from the War, and also with the associated pensions, etc.
Lincoln knew that the north was weary of war, he knew many Euro countries were about to recognise the confederacy.
He used that little speech and slavery to keep Europe out of it thus keeping his navel blockade which in turn starved the south and kept out European countries.
Lincoln was fighting indians in the west, taking their lands etc while trying to take the high road plus he locked up any one who spoke against him.
Today the left and blacks try and make this man as has a great man when history clearly shows another side to him
Bears repeating.
I wonder how many times I've had to explain this to Lost Causers. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was issued under his authority as Commander in Chief, as a war measure against the areas of the United States in rebellion. Ending slavery outside the areas in rebellion would require a constitutional amendment, something that Lincoln repeatedly asked for but which the Democrats in Congress repeatedly blocked. It was only after the election in November of 1864 that Republicans won enough seats in the upcoming Congress to overcome the Democratic opposition. At that point, a few lame-duck Democrats, apparently finding a sudden concern for their legacy, switched their earlier opposition and passed the amendment, which was promptly sent to the states.
The one place Lincoln could end slavery with a simple majority in Congress was in DC. This was done on April 16, 1862.
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