Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
But by far the biggest loss to not only the businesses, but primarily the government treasury was the loss of goods, i.e. tariff producing items, that would now be direct shipped South from Europe, and bypassing New York, Boston, and Philly. Remember that about 85% of the annual treasury income was from tariffs. If dutiable items even shriveled by 50%, you can imagine the pending damage to the Treasury.
Here is a contemporary article describing this situation:
“GOODS ENTERING FREE AT ST. LOUIS.
The St. Louis Republican, of the 23d says: “Every day our importers of foreign merchandise are receiving, by way of New Orleans, very considerable quantities of goods, duty free. The goods are landed at the port of New Orleans-no Custom-house notice is taken of them-no bonds are executed for the payment of duties on their arrival there; and on many articles the saving of one half the duty only, would afford a handsome profit. If this thing is to become permanent, there will be an entire revolution in the course of trade, and New York will suffer terribly. Our merchants have capital enough to justify them in making their purchases in Europe, and shipping to New Orleans, and in that city, because of the difference in the tariff, goods can be bought cheaper than in New York. With these advantages, we shall be able to sell cheaper than any other city in the Valley of the Mississippi.”
~Harper's Weekly, April 6, 1861.
You can see very clearly how vulnerable the entire shipping empire of the North was upon secession, and the fear these people would have.
"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow" ~Chicago Daily Times, December 10, 1860
"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually." ~Chicago Daily Times, December 10, 1860 "
"The government cannot well avoid collecting the federal revenues at all Southern ports, even after the passage of secession ordinances; and if this duty is discharged, any State which assumes a rebellious attitude will still be obliged to contribute revenue to support the Federal Government or have her commerce entirely destroyed" ~Philadelphia Press, December 21, 1860
You are being made to look more stupid then you already are. I’d suggest to you to stop but I have to admit watching “BroJOeK’’ school is... entertaining.
The first two above were published a few days before the first state seceded.
At this point, the newspapers were in a bit of a panic about the revenue.
The last article was written a day after secession. It is good to note that nowhere does it complain of slavery as either a problem or cause of of secession....unlike many here who would minimize the financial panic by presenting slavery hyperbole.
After just a couple of weeks, the editorials became more aggressive as seen in these:
“It is the enforcement of the revenue laws, not the coercion of the State that is the question of the hour. If those laws cannot be enforced, the Union is clearly gone; if they can, it is safe”
~Philadelphia Press, January 15, 1861
“They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interest.... These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They [the North] are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are as mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it.”
~New Orleans Daily Crescent, January 21, 1861
“The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more ships than all other trade. It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose. No-we MUST NOT let the South go!”
~Union Democrat (Manchester, New Hampshire), February 19, 1861
Interestingly, still no talk of slavery.....only MONEY.
“... the mask [of protecting slavery] has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possesed of the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade....The government would be false if this state of things were not provided against.”
~Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861
Interesting.....in that this editor seemed to think that the issue of secession had been used as a diversionary excuse.
Did he not believe the Cornerstone Speech? Looks like he did not.
He certainly believed that the entire issue was about MONEY.
You can see very clearly how vulnerable the entire shipping empire of the North was upon secession, and the fear these people would have.
These people with whom we are arguing simply do not get it. Economic independence of the South from the North very badly damages the Northern economy in many disparate ways that are not obvious to people who are not accustomed to thinking in these terms, but the Businessmen of New York/New England area were not fools. They knew very well that a major source of economic power was shifting out of their grasp, and it would spell ruin or severe attenuation of their finances if the South remained independent.
An additional 40% of direct cash flow to the South, (cutting out New York middlemen) plus the added economic impact of lower prices from the reduced tariff on imports would have initiated boom conditions in all areas of the South from which such profits could be made.
This would quickly result in investments in businesses such as textiles and machine factories, because the capital to make such investments would be there.
Not only would the North lose the immediate revenues from the trade, they would be facing an arising competition against their own existing industries, such as steel and textiles.
Southern independence was a financial nightmare for these men, and they were intelligent enough to realize that Southern independence would spell economic doom if it was allowed to continue.
“...That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop....”
~New York Evening Post, March 1861
“Blockade Southern Ports. With no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls”
~Philadelphia Press, March 18, 1861
“...The government...is bound to collect the revenue duties on every ship which enters a Southern port. Its revenue cutters can and will hover out of reach of the shore guns round the mouth of the ports, and compel the payment of the Federal tribute....”
~The Living Age, Boston, March 23, 1861.
Still no mention of slavery as a cause for the blockade.
ONLY MONEY.
Money was the reason Lincoln went into the war. He was a railroad attorney and represented them as president. They needed the union together. Lincoln had previously written about the States had the right to leave the union and his inaugural address said he could care less about abolishing slavery. It was all about railroad money.
Something to the effect of the guns having sufficient reach to do that.
And Northern Apologists wonder why the South didn't like the idea of a Federal fort overlooking the entrance to their port city. The idea of using it to destroy their city and their commerce was already voiced!
Inaccurate taunts only work on people who don't know what they are talking about. I am not the slightest bit ashamed. I am pointing out the math, and you people want to argue about everything but the math.
Up and until December of 1860, the political disagreements and Congressional battles were about the balance of power between the agricultural South, and the Mercantilist North and Midwest.
Within six weeks, and due to the advent of a new tariff and a new political platform, the argument was now between the establishment Union and a progressive South on the verge of economic explosion.
The issue of slavery was now a non-issue for these people.
Add to that the superiority of the delivery system of the Mississippi that would destroy the Northeastern shipping system as well as the tariff schemes, and no wonder Governors, businessmen, and Congressmen were lined up at Lincoln's door to require him to stop the South.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, you try to make all your problems look like nails.
They couldn't tell the truth; That they wanted the South to keep paying a disproportionate share of the bills; That they wanted to keep making those millions of dollars from the labor of slaves;
The truth wouldn't work, because regardless of what the businessmen and the governing rulers were, the ordinary people were quite moral and they would not be induced to attack others simply because they were losing jobs and trade to them.
No, the ordinary public had to be induced into this, and the truth would not motivate them to war.
Thus the hyperbole and propaganda.
I was reading Scott Adams the other day. (Author of the cartoon "Dilbert)
He said something along the lines of "People do not reason their way into a position. They make up their mind what they want to believe and then they look for arguments that support the position they want to believe."
The truth was economic, but that sounds unethical, and so they had to find a substitute truth to make them feel good about invading and murdering people.
They knew they had to invade and murder people to rescue their economics, but this wouldn't play in the moral society that existed then, so they had to rationalize other "moral" explanations for why they were invading and murdering people.
Initially they advanced "to preserve the Union", but that really wasn't a very morally compelling cause, so they had to up the hyperbole and claim they were doing it for the slaves. (18 months after the war had started.)
The truth is, they hated blacks and would rather see them thrown out of the country than to live with them, but it sounded good, or at least better than any other moral cause of which they could think.
It certainly sounded better than "We are going to invade to get back that money we lost when the South went independent."
No, that argument wouldn't sell at all.
Charles Dickens also thought it was a diversionary excuse. I think he accurately pegged the cause of the conflict at the time.
"I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily to recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.
"Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
That is not an idle threat, and it makes it very clear why the Confederates did not want the Union turning those guns on Charleston.
It was about Railroad money, it was about Shipping money, it was about manufacturing money, it was about government revenue money, It was about banking, warehousing, insurance, and trade. About the only thing it wasn't about was freedom for the slaves.
It didn't become about that until the bloodshed had become so bad that revenge became a greater motivation than greed.
Yes, Lincoln was a corporate attorney with a "Mercantilist" ideology. What was good for big business was good for America.
We are currently fighting the descendants of these very same people in regards to illegal immigrants, and H-1B visas. Apparently the power barons have never quite lost their appetite for slaves.
I will check my library.
Well said. Modern day slaves.
Fixed it for you. You're welcome.
DiogenesLamp: "The numbers tell a different story. 3/4ths of that pile is the consequence of Southern exports."
But those numbers say no such thing, and if you read my posts, you'd well know that.
In 1860 total US exports, including specie, were roughly $400 million.
Cotton exports were less than $200 million, which is roughly 50%.
Other exports you might lump in add up to less than 10%, but those exports were just as likely to be Northern produced as Southern, or if Southern they came from Union Border States like Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri.
So I'd say that 1/3 of those other exports (i.e., tobacco, hemp, molasses, etc.) came from Confederate-South states meaning, as I've repeatedly said: the actual exports from Confederate-South states came much closer to 50% than to 75% or 87%.
DiogenesLamp: "Move 3/4ths of the trade represented by that pile to the south, and New York is in a serious crises."
But by 1860 roughtly 80% of those exports already shipped directly from such Southern cities as New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile Bay and Galveston to European markets.
On return trips those ships brought imports and immigrants to the city where they were most welcomed: New York and also Philadelphia & Boston.
"Serious trouble" is a relative term.
The fact is that New York & other eastern cities quickly adjusted during Civil War and learned to prosper without Southern cotton.
So cotton was just not that big a deal for them.
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