Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.
The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
rustbucket: "I also posted about the decreasing US tariff revenue during the war when expressed in constant 1860 dollars -- even though the northern tariff rate kept increasing."
BroJoeK: Not that I recall, and I'm beginning to wonder if you haven't conflated me with somebody else -- Michelle perhaps, Barry?
Oh, but I did post that information to you. Here is what I said [Post 341]:
On an inflation adjusted basis tariff revenue fell significantly during the war as the papers critical to the Morrill tariff had forecast even though the tariff rate kept being adjusted higher and higher during the war.Here are links to old posts of mine where I described how I did those calculations and provided additional information: [Post 1172, Post 288, and Post 131].
The set of monthly figures in Post 131 might be familiar to you. PeaRidge posted them to you in the present thread [Post 294]. Incidentally, I did not apply inflation to those monthly 1861 figures.
Rusty, that is a testable hypothesis and here is the link to begin testing.
It tells us that in terms of average worker compensation, $100 in 1860 was worth roughly $150 in 1866, but nearly $200 in terms of consumer price index.
What does that mean?
Now, check out this source and you'll see that tariff revenues doubled during this time period.
So, Morrill tariff revenues in 1866 were double those of 1860, but because of inflation could buy nor more stuff than could 1860's lower amounts.
Those revenues could in 1866, however, hire twice as many workers as in 1860.
For comparison consider: from 1866 to 1900 average wages rose about 20% while consumer prices fell 50% meaning workers could buy, on average, more than double in 1900 what they could in 1866.
By 1900 US tariff receipts had more than doubled again, but with consumer prices cut in half they could purchase four times the stuff as tariff revenues could in 1866.
What does that mean?
1.In those years worker pay rose roughly 50%.
2.At the same time, average prices roughly doubled
It means that maybe one day you will understand inflation, but I won't hold my breath.
Using your figures it means that in 1866 the $150 average worker could buy 75% of what he/she could buy in 1860. 100 x 150/200 = 75%. That is not all that different from the "real wage" percentages of 77% of the 1860 real wage in 1864 and 82% in 1865 that were listed in Thornton and Ekelund's book "Tariff, Blockades, and Inflation" that I cited above.
In other words, during the war the price of consumer goods went up faster than wages. Even though a worker was paid more at the end of the war, he/she couldn't buy as much as he could in 1860 because the prices had gone up even more than his wages. The worker's real wages declined during the war. He/she got more dollars, but they were worth less.
Our youngest son is considering a move to San Francisco from here in Texas. In San Francisco he could earn more money, but he couldn't afford a house in the San Francisco area unless maybe he commuted 2 hours each way. But, but .. you say ... he is getting paid more. Yeah, but he couldn't afford in California what he can afford in Texas. Your 1866 worker was getting paid more, but he couldn't afford what he could in 1860. "Real Wages" matter.
1.In those years worker pay rose roughly 50%.
2.At the same time, average prices roughly doubled
Those words above should have been italicized in my last post because they were your words.
Off subject but Rustbucket, in the ten years I’ve known you you’ve never told me who you’re favorite Confederate General is? I’m gonna say General Longstreet.
Made it clear that the city's government and merchants supported secession in order to preserve the validity of southern debt. Said many visited Lincoln to threaten their own secession.
Very little support of abolition. Very few considered slavery an issue.
Made it clear that they all knew that loss of Southern goods trade would ruin the city.
He made it clear that he was an author, not an historian when asked by someone in the audience about Lincoln's mindset when starting the war.
Strausburgh said that the fear of the spread of slavery motivated the political thinking, but he failed to explain why the concern with this would continue after secession. With the South out of congress there would be no obstacle to admission of any free state. With slavery nonexistent in the territories, states would easily vote on admission.
I think that is the nexus of the failure of academics and historians that fail to explain Lincoln's (and his party and supporters) orders to Charleston to ward off Southern free trade with Europe.
Another interesting point he made about the impact of lost city trade revenue.........
He said that the loss of all the Southern goods being transshipped directly overseas caused a massive collapse in the city. Business failed. Unemployment soared and fortunes were lost.
He said that once war was certain, that New
York banks made massive war loans to the federal government. Then Washington engaged New York shipbuilders to build warships.
They contracted with area clothiers such as Brooks Brothers for uniforms, and medical and pharmaceutical companies like Squibb for war supplies.
He made it clear that new prosperity appeared all over the city as a result of Lincoln's push South.
Nor did a British blockade starve the French during Napoleonic wars.
But blockade helped reduced French war marking capabilities, and that's why they did it.
Same with the Confederacy, so what exactly is your problem here?
DiogenesLamp: "As for shipping a Locomotive from Europe (Did they even make them in Southern Gauge over there?) that sounds like an impressive feat.
Perhaps they could have shipped it in pieces, but assembled?
What did those things weigh?
A Hundred tons perhaps?
Never mind.
I found a list.
The smallest Steam locomotive was 491,000 lbs, and the biggest was 856,000 lbs."
No, that's bigger than the largest in 1860, not the smallest, by far.
In 1860 the largest U.S. locomotives ran around 100 tons total while 20 to 40 tons was more typical.
Such weights are well within the capacities of your average ocean freighter of the time.
As for railroad gages, you can be certain manufacturers would produce to whatever specifications major customers required.
Point is, by war's end Confederates suffered severely from shortages of rail, engines, cars & telegraph wire, all of which could be purchased abroad if no blockade.
That's why I don't "get" what point you are trying to argue here.
If you don't want to be treated like a carny show, don't act like a carny show, pal.
Total nonsense & fantasy, based on complete corruption of historical facts & reason.
In truth, you've bought into a Big Lie, with no real benefit to you or anyone else.
You ought to give it up.
DiogenesLamp: "I'm not going to indulge your Ft. Sumter/ Pearl Harbor comparison.
The "Gulf of Tonkin incident" is a far closer analogy.
No, Tonkin was closer to several 1941 Atlantic incidents, including US destroyers Greer, Kearney and Rubin James.
In the first of these, the Greer, no Americans died, in the second, Kearney, 11 died, 22 wounded and in the third, by sinking the Rubin James, a German torpedo took the lives of 116 US sailors.
FDR used each incident to push Americans toward war, but by late November 1941 still 80% opposed it.
The difference in 1964 was that many Americans believed a small war in Vietnam was necessary to prevent Communists from becoming the world's next Nazis.
So an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin which would have been ignored in 1941 was enough for Congress to authorize a **limited** military response.
Fort Sumter was **much** different, for one thing vastly closer than Europe or Asia.
For another, the Confederacy represented a hugely greater existential threat than Germany or Japan ever thought of being.
For a third, by comparison to the very small US Army of the time, Fort Sumter's garrison was relatively larger than the U.S. military at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Of course you know all this, you just chose to deny it in favor of Lost Causer mythological nonsense.
If you will simply remember that we are talking about Democrats in New York, in 1861 and in 2016, then your fantasy begins to make a **little** sense.
These Democrats then were political allies to Southern Slavocrats, hated Republicans and favored any accommodations necessary to satisfy slavocrats.
They did not want war, and when war came anyway, they were only half-hearted in supporting it.
Those are the Northeasterners you claim to be the most evil of all evil historical characters -- and that's quite a group!
I don't think those Democrats are much to blame for anything except their moral indifference to the peculiar institution of slavery.
Which also seems to bother DiogenesLamp none at all.
Curious.
You doth protest way too much, all the while offering no arguments - zero, zip, nada arguments - to justify your ludicrous position, FRiend.
I have offered one. It's called "MATH."
When you address that one, i'll take you seriously. The factual and relevant numbers prove the Union was making a fortune off of the Southern Slaves. The numbers prove that it would cause New York and surrounding areas a huge economical upheaval if they were deprived of their monopolistically created money stream.
The evidence indicates the pressured their Agent in the WhiteHouse to start a war which they badly needed, and the evidence indicates he complied.
I'm not going to listen to your "specie" argument. It is nonsense. I am not going to listen to your Pearl Harbor argument. It is nonsense.
The provable facts demonstrate that there was a Huge and Massive economic cost to New York if the Southern States became Independent, and I believe you can always get to the bottom of something by simply following the money.
So you can prattle on about all your irrelevant side issues, but until you come up with something that changes the math, I simply have no interest in reading it or taking it seriously.
Dude, I got it! You’re channeling Edward A. Pollard!
Those pages show up sideways on the screen, so I printed them to be certain -- they contain no data relevant to this discussion.
I will check out the other links you offer, and let you know my findings.
As we've discussed before, the 1857 tariff **averaged** 15%, the new Morrill proposed rate was **originally** ~22% but eventually reached much higher.
In terms of actual revenues, the Confederate tariff did collect some until the Union blockade became effective, around June of 1861.
Those links provide no data I could find on exports or imports by state or region.
Debow does provide some export data, by port, but nothing suggesting which states produced the exported products.
However, Debow does drive yet another nail in the coffin of DiogenesLamp's claims that all "Southern exports" were forced by US law to ship through New York City.
In fact, Debow clearly shows the vast majority of "Southern exports" shipped directly to their customers overseas.
Bottom line: indisputably, cotton was/is a product of the Deep Confederate South and it was huge -- roughly 50% of all exports by dollar value pre-Civil War ($192 million of $400 million, including specie).
But all other exports, regardless of which port they shipped from could just as easily have been products of the Upper South, Border States, Mid-west, Far-West, Mid-Atlantic or Northeastern states.
And since there is no data showing where these exports originated, by state, the natural assumption would be roughly equal shares from each.
So, seven regions producing 50% of all exports works out to about 7% per region or about $30 million.
If then we add $30 million to the Deep South's $192 million in cotton we get $222 million or 56% of all exports coming from seven states of the first secession Confederacy.
That seems to me a pretty generous estimate, absent more precise data.
You left out the rest of the quote I had provided. Here is a more complete excerpt of what I provided:
... the Confederate tariff lowered the former rates of 1857, especially the leading 24% rate to 15%, coal and coke, raw hemp and tobacco, leather, iron ore, and pig iron, from 24% to 10%. The duty on sugar and molasses, however, was but slightly reduced, from 24% to 20%, perhaps from lingering protectionist motives, which we shall see were not wholly absent.
As you can see, the Confederate tariff lowered some rates significantly.
Here is some detail from the US tariff of 1857 [my bold below to illustrate the different rates that were applied to different items in the US tariff of 1857]:
That on and after the first day of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, ad valorem duties shall be imposed, in lieu of those now imposed upon goods wares and merchandize imported from abroad into the United States, as follows, viz: Upon the articles enumerated in schedules A, and B, of the tariff act of eighteen hundred and forty-six, a duty of thirty per centum, and upon those enumerated in schedules C, D, E, F, G, and H, of said act, the duties of twenty-four per centum, nineteen per centum, fifteen per centum, twelve per centum, eight per centum, and four per centum, respectively, with such exceptions as are hereinafter made; and all articles so imported as aforesaid and not enumerated in the said schedules, nor in schedule, I, shall pay a duty of fifteen per centum.
Perhaps it would be easier for you to follow a specific item such as iron. From "The Tariff History of the United States" by F. W. Taussig, 1910 [1892] on page 109:
Under the act of 1842, the duty on hammered bar was made $17 per ton, that on rolled bar $25 per ton. The act of 1846 gave up finally the discrimination between the two kinds, and admitted both alike at a duty of 30 per cent.; and the act of 1857 admitted them at 24 per cent.
As you can see, under the 1857 US tariff, imported iron was taxed at 24 percent, not your average tariff rate of 15 percent. Manufactured goods faced a higher tariff than the average rate, as I've posted before.
Sorry BroJoeK but the blatherings of these klowns are nothing more than Lost Causer snipe hunts. The more you indulge them by trying to nail down the absurdity of each claim, the more they send you scouting for more irrelevant minutia. And they are happy to oblige in encouraging you down that path.
All these represent post-war rationalizations (read: excuses) for southern misbehavior. They represent the outer orbit of outlier opinion even among lost causers.
Carry on.
Let's see if I can help.
Originally you questioned data I posted on the portion of total US exports of Southern origin.
From your postings, it is not clear to me if you want data from sources you trust, or if you want to use primary sources from which you can do your own calculations.
It is also not clear exactly what sources you trust.
As it pertains to trade data, you have only one reliable source.....United States Customs data. It was collected daily, compiled monthly, and supplied to the Census Bureau, United States Treasury, US Congress, and the President.
So back to sideways. If you were unable to see page 48, I will be glad to read it for you.
The chart gives various categories of export/import data for fiscal year ending June 30, 1860.
If you are ok with that year, then a reliable comparison of geographical origins begins with establishing trade total numbers. I trust you would agree with that.
On page 48, column 3, at the bottom, the number there is the total dollar value of US Imports for that year.
That number is fundamental to the question about trade.
Now, staying with page 48, and moving to the right, column 7, at the bottom, lists total Exports for that year.
If you prefer data for 1861, see page 49 which also gives export/import figures for that year. I trust this is acceptable. If not say so now.
You saw my post #1477. .
Any of those will help you compute trade data by individual customs house. As you will see, it can be compiled by port, type, and value, but apparently you did not even look at it.
If you do not want to spend time doing that, see post 1435 for the totals. That data was compiled from Customs.
It only mattered from where they were shipped, and if they were reshipped through northern ports.
And it is important to note that after secession, the “issue” of the amount of Southern products now being shipped direct did not matter to anyone except northern businessmen. Of course from all the newspaper articles, the merchants knew the loss would be significant, especially after the tariff rates were announced in Montgomery.
Since the US Treasury was facing an immediate drop in revenue to the point of being unable to pay its obligations, that is where there was a problem.
What did matter was the North's inability to collect tariffs without the use of force.
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